Case Studies

Case Studies

Growth Planning & Budgeting

A successful lifestyle brand had extended its retail footprint to more than 40 countries within a short time. After a fall in operating results, TRE was engaged to review the retail division’s operations – looking at markets and driving profitability.

Direct Sourcing

A fashion chain had allowed obstacles to prevent it taking full advantage of low cost direct sourcing. Team Retail Excellence was tasked with setting targets, and then working with the team to overcome issues and achieve the vision set and associated financial performance.

Partner Retail Management

An American fashion group expands its European brand distribution by means of a professional partner retail approach. Team Retail Excellence facilitates the organizational build-up, tools and processes for seven brands. When the project is completed the brands are ready to double their previous expansion and growth plans – and delivered.

Turnaround Management

A new management team had taken charge of a loss-making multi-channel company with misaligned processes. After the worst of the sales haemorrhaging was stopped, a 12-month program fixed the process issues and underlying performance – preparing them for profitable growth.

Multichannel Management

A non-food retailer wanted to move from three sales channels (stores, catalogues and internet) to true multichannel retailing. Team Retail Excellence worked with them to integrate key processes – driving consistency and synergy across very different channel needs.

Global Brand Retailing

An international luxury brand had set up 600 of its own stores worldwide. Rapid expansion meant 60 countries took "independent" retail paths. Our challenge was to help them define the right model and control points to drive financial performance as markets tightened.

Buying from the Sales Floor

A family-operated retail chain with a large franchise network needed to change how product was managed to reflect its scale. As they prepared to invest in a merchandise management system, Team Retail Excellence received a mandate to help them make the change effectively.

Store Process Excellence

A lifestyle fashion brand had opened 400 of its own stores in five years. But staff costs were high, and there was insufficient focus on customer service. TRE worked the client to release over £3M p.a. - while driving up customer service, conversion and basket-size.

Roadmap to improved buying strategy

One of Europe’s largest clothing retailers recognised the need to revise its buying strategy – from tactical and heavily cost-based to a balanced approach with strategic supplier management to drive product innovation. It asked Team Retail Excellence to support its internal teams with expertise in buying and sourcing. A hands-on approach followed, including restructuring internally and a properly managed transition.

International Strategy

One of Central Europe’s largest retailers had grown through success mainly in toys and electronics. Looking to move into fashion retail, its initial attempts failed. Team Retail Excellence was called in and, following an assessment of what was by then a well served and highly competitive market, developed a concept and finance plan for a new fashion value format

Interim Management

A wholesaler encountered early success with a new retail format. Pushing for growth led to a cash crisis. Team Retail Excellence assumed the position of Chief Restructuring Officer and worked with management to guide the company back to profitable, sustainable growth.

Change Management

An international womenswear brand was working to optimise its strategy and product range. Two large-scale consulting projects to do so were well received, but implementation had stalled. Team Retail Excellence was called on board to drive real ownership and change.

Pricing Management

A German company with 130 stores in Germany and other European countries had carried out numerous interrelated management programs, which were showing initial signs of success.

Calendar Management

An international retail chain with over 700 stores had grown continuously. Its existing buying and merchandizing processes were divided into centralized and decentralized areas of responsibility. Simplification, reduced numbers of un-necessary touch-points and hand-overs, plus strict calendar management greatly improved effectiveness and responsiveness.

Merchandise Management

A successful, vertically structured fashion retailer suspected that its allocation management process was not fully realizing its stores’ sales and profit potential. They were right, but their initial thoughts on the “solution” were wrong – TRE helped them find the solution that worked best for them.

Growth Planning & Budgeting

Consolidation and restructuring for healthy new growth

After a period of dynamic growth followed by a drop in results, an internationally operating sporting goods and lifestyle brand with ~500 stores in 40 countries seeks a qualiﬁ ed assessment of its retail business.

Within six weeks, a team of two experienced managers from Team Retail Excellence analyzes the ﬁ nancial status quo in 20 European countries in which the brand runs retail stores, working with the management to develop a framework for competitive store growth programs. On completion of the assessment, the board of directors broadens the project scope to include further analyses of the other countries throughout the world, with a focus on Brazil, China, India and Russia. After evaluating the portfolio and looking closely at the strategic and structural deﬁ cits, TRE makes its recommendation: put the brakes on growth and begin consolidating.

In cooperation with the company’s retail and ﬁ nance department, TRE develops a budget and 5-year plan to get the retail business back on track for growth. The short-term investment budget focuses on the development of a restructuring package. The key: the breakeven point for sales must be reduced signiﬁcantly. To achieve this, a number of stores are put to the test. Overhead structures are to undergo reshaping, while withdrawal from strategically less important markets is considered.

Ten months into the project, TRE continues to provide valuable implementation support. Five Team Retail Excellence managers with different areas of expertise have helped initiate meaningful and structured corporate development.

Deliverables include:
• Diverse retail analyses and planning instruments (e.g. country readiness assessments)
• Manual of the top 20 global retail benchmarks
• A restructuring plan to reduce overhead costs by more than 25%
• A new retail vision and strategy
• Management programs for turnaround

We have now begun to structure the reorientation in cooperation with the new retail management.

Direct Sourcing

Direct sourcing boosts gross margin by €15M

A fashion chain specializing in private labels in the midrange segment and operating with total sales ﬂ oors of 200,000 m² wants to reorient its buying within three seasons. As part of an international retail group, it has access to a buying organization in Asia, but only 20% of goods are bought there. The share of imports has stagnated for years, as its processes and organization are insufﬁ ciently prepared for large-scale direct buying in low-wage regions. In contrast, direct competitors operate with an initial markup of up to 70% and achieve margins of 61%.

Team Retail Excellence begins working with the buying department to develop quick-win programs aimed at shifting €50m of buying volume to take advantage of “lowhanging fruit.” At the same time, the groundwork is laid for the successful implementation of direct sourcing. A detailed action plan ensures that restructuring objectives are achieved.

The results realized include:
• Objectives and measures in each product group with the overall goal of achieving 70% direct buying and an increase in gross margin of 3.9% pts. within two years.
• The proportion of imports is doubled to 45% within just two seasons and the initial markup is increased by more than 4% pts. Gross margin growth: almost €5m.
• Supplier scoring and establishment of strategic supplier alliance in Western Europe. Domestic suppliers reduced by 20% within the second season.
• Sourcing strategies developed for key countries, supply channels and suppliers in each product group.
• New assortment development process aimed at achieving 80% in-house product development.
• Development of key performance indicators (KPIs) in monthly buying reporting to measure implementation progress.

Partner Retail Management

An American fashion group with seven brands in wholesale, own retail and partner retail has grown its European sales to 1.2bn. Partner retail makes up 5%, based on opportunistic and unstructured development. Country-level sales managers have taken different paths, and the approximately 200 stores in nine European countries offer consumers different shopping experiences. But what’s lacking most is transparency as to whether growth potential has been exploited and whether partner-retail is as proﬁtable as wholesale.

We form a small project group of brand managers, country managers and business analysts, assess the existing processes, organizational structures and tools used to steer partner growth. As with most European brands, partner retail grows mainly through the initiative of key accounts, without a sales force of its own or local competency. But two brands set internal benchmarks, demonstrating with 50 stores and a sales share of 20% that partner retail can be an autonomous and dynamic sales channel, provided you know how to organize it.

We examine the contracts and economic viability in the business and for the ﬁrst time document the proﬁtability of partner retail. As with other brands, partner retail is larger and more proﬁ table than own retail. But it emerges that key account managers often include very generous discounts in partner contracts, where investment subsidies would be a better solution.

• In a series of workshops with sales managers and controlling staff, we present our ﬁndings and discover that, above all, brand managers with wholesale experience can beneﬁt from learning more about partner retail
• We develop an organization scorecard, an array of partner-retail steering tools and recommend developing partner retail to become a sales division in its own right
• We revise the standard contract, encourage a change in the discount policy and develop a tool to calculate partner investments
• We demonstrate to the brands that their partner retail has signiﬁcantly larger growth and sales potential and double the original expansion plan for the coming ﬁve years

In the years that follow, based on newly acquired trust in their partner retail readiness, the brands invest in the business area and appoint managers with experience in partner retail.

The ﬁve-year targets are met as early as three years after completion of the project. Above all, improved transparency and revised contracts help signiﬁ cantly boost proﬁtability.

Turnaround Management

Multichannel - Multichallenge

Faulty category-management and expansion policies force a medium-sized multi-channel company belonging to an international retail group to kick off a turnaround program. The new management launches the recovery program by closing stores and cutting costs, and achieves the turnaround within a few months. But it’s still a long way to the breakeven point, not to mention bestin-class status – especially for the buying department, which has to single-handedly serve three retail formats. The challenge: the sales channels are drifting apart, yet synergies must still be realized.

Team Retail Excellence supports the management in organizing the turnaround. Following a brief analysis, the experts identify hidden operational and ﬁnancial potential and receive the assignment of restructuring the company’s buying: brand, private label, fashion, hard goods, seasonal items, never out of stock, concession, special make-ups, core items, buying onto shelf and expansion of the Internet appearance in line with the demands of sales divisions that couldn’t be further apart. “And right away, please – breakeven must be achieved.“

Twelve months of intensive work later, the company can see breakeven on the horizon. All sales divisions are on the right track to reach breakeven or even begin turning a proﬁt.
TRE helps:
• Restructure the buying organization
• Enhance the level of expertise among buyers and throughout the buying department
• Boost gross margin
• Improve performance per square meter and per web page
• Streamline processes

Today the group sees the company as best-in-class in many disciplines. Investments in the expansion of the business area are planned, and the company has good chances of becoming market leader in terms of both customer acceptance and overall performance.

Multichannel Management

From three sales channels to real multichannel

A non-food retailer utilized three sales channels: stores, catalogs and internet. To strengthen its market position on a lasting basis, the company sought to develop into a real multichannel retailer. It wanted to become fully competitive in every sales channel while at the same time offering its customers a consistent shopping experience regardless of the channel or stage of the buying process – from initial consultation and sale to aftersales service.

Team Retail Excellence supported the retailer in sharpening its multichannel strategy and deﬁ ning the organizational and process-related changes necessary to implement the strategy.

The concept includes following core elements:
• Introduction of category management to strengthen assortment expertise across all channels and as a basis for alignment of customer communication (content and timing) in all channels
• Development of the catalog assortment based on the online assortment
• Presentation of the complete conventional store assortment in the online shop
• Harmonization of prices across all sales channels
• Synchronization of all company wide marketing activities via integrated campaign management
• Setup of a central customer relationship management platform responsible for handling all customer information and deﬁning as well as implementing direct marketing measures
• Setup of a staff qualiﬁcation and change management program

By involving the company’s staff in the concept development process, TRE secured the support of the entire organization. Success drivers in implementation include the cultivation of required functional expertise among employees as well as the realization of change management measures.

Global Brand Retailing

Dynamic growth, local retail und efficient supply chain

A jewellery brand based in Central Europe expanded its worldwide sales network by 600 own stores within a few years – with convincing overall results. To execute growth plans at a swift pace, sales organizations in EEA, NA, APAC, EEMEA & LATAM set up their own retail structures, created their own organizations and processes as well as their own merchandise management systems. The sales performance is convincing, with own retail approaching ¼ of total turnover, yet the company’s overall cost and balance sheet structures have suffered under the 8-year store investment program.

As a number of operational warning signals appear, the fundamental strategic question of whether “all retail is local” is still the right approach is raised. Due to lack of uniform planning and supply chain management, the stores’ sales ﬂoor performance begins dropping at a rate of 10% p.a. Overstocking, stock-outs and lead times increase, while the capacity to react swiftly to market changes decreases.

Had the fast expansion come at the cost of supply chain efﬁciency?

Within less than six man-weeks, TRE and a team of client managers assess the key supply chain processes, organizational structures and selected KPIs and put the existing retail model to the test.

In a two-day executive workshop, case studies and examples of best practices of comparable retail brands are reviewed. Managers and staff form an initial vision of the potential of a restructured retail supply chain. In a further workshop, TRE presents control instruments for efﬁcient supply chain management and helps conceptualize management programs for supply chain excellence.

Over the course of the weeks, we developed:
• A Retail Readiness Assessment
• SWOT documentation and a list of measures for supply chain processes
• A glossary of the main retail KPIs for globally uniform retail control tools
• Detailed descriptions of ﬁve supply chain management implementation programs

TRE conservatively estimates the top line sales potential with realization of the proposed programs at € 100m. But possibly more important: TRE votes against a centralized retail management, convinced that the regional/local control of retail supply chains can achieve excellence, provided the regions start to learn from one other and adopt best practices from in-house and other brand retailers.

Buying from the Sales Floor

Bringing together excellent talents for excellent results

A chain grows successfully over the course of decades. With more than 1000 stores, the company generates healthy proﬁts. But its business processes and systems haven’t been adapted in step with the expansion. Its buying and sales ﬂoor management are not integrated, an increasing obstacle to productivity in the stores. The organization and its processes are not efﬁcient enough to meet the competitive demands and enable the company to set itself apart from other contenders.

The retailer puts together a team of its most expert decisionmakers to tackle the project, and assigns project management to Team Retail Excellence. The task: reorientation of core business processes. TRE structures the approach, teaches project management techniques, coaches the team members and introduces best practice retail processes. The interdisciplinary project team develops practical solutions and sets up a new process and organization architecture in preparation for the implementation of the new system.

Core elements of the reorientation introduced by TRE:
• Establishment of buying into sales ﬂoor
• Development of complementary product categories for different retail formulas
• Implementation of assortment planning
• A new understanding of the roles of buying, assortment allocation and sales

After four months of efﬁcient project work, the new concept is established and preparations for implementation completed. The team members gain new strengths from the project: they show themselves and the management what they can accomplish – without a big team of consultants.

The management appreciates the efﬁcient project work and the pragmatic solutions. The system frees up capacity for further expansion. But the most important result: working on the project in addition to their regular tasks, the team members scored a major success for themselves and the company. And the entire organization backs the new solutions.

Store Process Excellence

Costumer Service oder Cost Reduction: Why "or"?

A globally operating lifestyle brand opened 400+ stores in different parts of the world in ﬁve years. Shrinking sales ﬂoor performance and growing retail opex, especially rental and staff cost, cause EBT to drop below 5%. Team Retail Excellence’s managers were asked to improve POS proﬁtability and revise store processes for outlets and full price stores.

The initial four-month turnaround program begins with process retail analysis at four pilot stores in Germany. Together with the area and store managers, TRE tracks 100 typical store processes on site. Findings point out: Too many inventory processes, too much time allocated for administration and highly unsatisfying customer service and merchandise movement. Above all: The execution of all HQ brand and marketing guidelines leaves stores with only 8% of annual staff hours free for customer care.

High brand and marketing demands at POS result in 30% more working hours than in the case of vertical retailer. No wonder store payroll costs reach >20% of sales. Further store checks in the Benelux region, Czech Republic, Italy and UK conﬁrm signiﬁcant potential for staff mobilization or cost reduction throughout Europe.

In cooperation with sales management, TRE reorganizes processes at the pilot stores. The goal is to measure effectiveness before large-scale rollout to all EEA stores, avoid customer service risks and secure a high visual merchandise standard.

The ﬁndings six weeks later: the pilot stores’ ﬁgures, including sales, staff hours and quality of retail presentation are convincing. The stores have the potential to signiﬁcantly boost their EBIT results, as brand marketing and assortment follow branding and commercial guidelines.

Our projection for the 160 EEA stores: 300,000 staff hours (10% of all working hours) are either dispensable or can be utilized for better customer service.

We coach the rollout in the European stores for 12 more weeks, until all key countries have completed implementation of new processes.
Six months after project completion, TRE is called in to check the results of implementation. Findings:
• 96% implementation of new processes
• 10% reduction of staff hours (within the ﬁrst six months)
• 1% increase in items per sales slip
• 7% rise in conversion rate

Roadmap to improved buying strategy

Buying management

A major European retailer has begun restructuring its buying to meet future challenges. The sourcing philosophy “best price beats all,” which enabled the company to become large and successful, reveals its limits. The supplier base is no longer willing to take part in the auction selection process and innovations are increasingly going to competitors. Directors seeks to launch an effective counteroffensive based on a new form of cooperation with strategically important suppliers. The buying department has difﬁculty implementing the plans.

”We want you to help us help ourselves. And please, leave PowerPoint at home!” – these are the instructions the Board of Directors gives Team Retail Excellence when work to support the implementation of the sourcing strategy begins in early 2007.

The project takes place in two phases requiring different levels of support. The initial priority is to structure the teams and their projects as well as to coach the project heads. Phase 2 focuses on conceptualizing the supply chain strategy.
The topics addressed include:
• Which buying and sourcing strategy is best suited to our speciﬁ c business model?
• How big are the gaps between current operations and the best practices of comparable retailers in Europe?
• The economic effects of bypassing sourcing agents – where does direct sourcing generate real value?
• With which countries and which suppliers do we want to develop long-term strategic relationships?
• 60% of sourcing in China, with all the related risks – where are there alternatives and what will it cost in gross margin?
• Should the company‘s own Hong Kong ofﬁce serve as an “agent” or cost center/extended workbench?
• What are the strategic and ﬁnancial beneﬁts of buying unﬁnished goods, e.g. raw materials?
• If we give up the auction process, what alternative means do we have of achieving excellent buying prices?

The ﬁnal sourcing strategy is documented in an implementation roadmap.

International Strategy

Value Retail for Russia's consumer

In early 2007, following its success in consumer electronics and toys, an international retail conglomerate in Easter Europe looks into entering fashion. The initial approach, developed internally, fails. Ten years after the opening of the market for western goods, Eastern Europaen consumers are too well informed to be satisﬁed with a run-of-the-mill fashion offering.

Team Retail Excellence is assigned the tasks of evaluating the existing concept, revising the model and vision, developing a marketing, visual merchandizing and store concept, drawing up a ﬁnancing plan and designing an implementation strategy for the entire project. A French investor is to be won over as a joint venture partner.

A comprehensive market analysis including 100 detailed store checks and outlet proﬁles of local competitors conﬁrms that the market has long since reached a stage of intense competition between attractive formats. Zara, Topshop, C&A, Bestseller, Marks & Spencer – practically all signiﬁcant western fashion retail brands are present, alongside a number of good Russian formats, all vying for the attention of the country’s largely brand-conscious female consumer.

• Fashion brand, fashion discount or fashion value retail?
• Brand or private label?
• Stores on High Street, at B locations or out of town?
• Ladies’ point or family store?
• Full product offering or niche?
• 200m², 800m² or 3000 m²?
• Own brand or franchise of a western brand?

A series of intensive workshop discussions focusing on the ﬁnancial and qualitative evaluation of the options leads to a vision of the new format, developed in dialogue with the customer. In cooperation with the design and architecture ﬁrm Schwitzke & Partner, the team develops a suitable store concept and a 5-year implementation plan for a competitive fashion value format.

Interim Management

Out of the crisis and into profitability and international expansion

A home deco wholesaler develops its own retail concept. Within a short time it enjoys initial successes with its dynamic expansion into retail. The company’s sales growth and proﬁ ts are excellent, but its familiar wholesale controlling instruments don’t work with retail. The expansion puts downward pressure on productivity, and the new retail business unit burns up capital. In the end, retail – although actually successful – is not ﬁnancially viable.

Team Retail Excellence takes on an interim management position as Chief Restructuring Ofﬁ cer, and works handin-hand with the partners in the family-owned company to develop the fast-action program “Cash” along with a range of other turnaround measures to boost productivity. Old stocks are sold off, and the convincing turnaround program helps the company secure fresh capital.

The controlling instruments implemented by Team Retail Excellence include:

Twelve months after Team Retail Excellence began its work, the company returns to the financial breakeven point. Stocks and debts are signiﬁ cantly reduced. Another 12 months on, it achieves a clearly positive EBIT. Team Retail Excellence is now working with the management to develop a strategy for 2011. Expansion of international business plays a key role.

Change Management

Real Change at last - after 2 consulting projects

An internationally operating womenswear brand with its own stores in various countries including Canada and Russia wants to reorganize its buying. Over the past three years, the management has invested close to one million euros in two consulting projects focused on strategy and collection planning. The projects, conducted by a respected consultancy with experience in the sector, are well received, but implementation just won’t get off the ground. Sales volumes stagnate and the initial markup is stuck at 2.1-fold. Management and staff are becoming increasingly skeptical, and beginning to resist implementation of the strategy. Team Retail Excellence comes on board to reverse this development and ensure that the overdue implementation takes place.

A trained coach and a manager with experience in buying & sourcing begin the project work with personal interviews regarding strategy and the project. They examine the motivation to realize change (intrinsic and extrinsic factors), analyze mindsets and evaluate the capacity and willingness of the management and project staff. An array of coaching tools (such as SKILL/WILL, competency model, GROW model) are deployed.

In the subsequent implementation phase, Team Retail Excellence carries out the following measures:
• Development of a concept for management programs to implement the strategy
• Development of a framework concept for project controlling
• Training of project managers
• Coaching of the management throughout the project development process
• Cultivation of a strong and permanent drive to implement the strategy

In contrast to previous attempts, staff members strongly identify with the project and its measures within a short time. Six months after the project kickoff, the buying management presents a convincing implementation roadmap to the holding. Its target: a 12–15% reduction in buying costs within two years. More important than all the ﬁ gures calculated and measures planned is the fact that management and staff have pulled together and fought to implement “their” project to boost efﬁ ciency in buying.

Sales Management

Top Service - Lean Operation

A medium-sized fashion retailer in the high-end menswear segment reduces sales staff costs from 19% to 13% following acquisition by an investor. A process optimization program is launched to ensure that customer service remains at a high level. It looks at aspects like individual customer orders, stock transfers and the introduction of merchandise handling teams.

Team Retail Excellence supports the management in conceptualizing and developing the new sales organization and processes. A brief analysis reveals: the stated objectives are feasible – and they promise additional sales potential.
The results of our project work:

• Restructured sales organization

• Service level maintained or raised

• Costs signiﬁ cantly reduced

• Processes streamlined

• Enhanced expertise among sales staff

A comprehensive approach is taken to implementation: new processes coordinate sales, buying, logistics and visual merchandising, while workforce scheduling is optimized and staff training measures are introduced. Important changes are implemented within three months of the project launch. As a result of the far-reaching restructuring of activities, the proportion of overall time spent serving customers is increased by 30% – despite a reduction in workforce hours. Beyond the immediate scope of the project, signiﬁcantly better interlocking of operations throughout the value chain is achieved. Presentation of merchandise on the sales ﬂ oor is noticeably improved.

Pricing Management

Pricing – unplanned planning

A German company with 130 stores in Germany and other European countries had carried out numerous interrelated management programs, which were showing initial signs of success. Current sales ﬂ uctuations were blamed on the absence of clear pricing structures in the product range, among other factors. As a result, the merchandise management planning was questioned.

The pricing as planned in the purchasing process was checked against market research data. Initial consequences were determined.

In cooperation with a team drawn from the customer’s staff, Team Retail Excellence closely examined the planning mechanisms relevant to pricing structures within the merchandise management system.
Working alongside those responsible for planning, Team Retail Excellence experts analyzed the structures and discussed what they meant in terms of planning. This revealed very detailed and interconnected planning. In pricing planning, however, there was insufﬁcient transfer of target ﬁ gures into actual practice. The prices were established as part of sales planning, yet were not validated in the goods intake process. Team Retail Excellence demonstrated the risks this involved.
In the weeks that followed, Team Retail Excellence developed a pricing tool able to:

• Handle the transfer of merchandise from goods intake to the sales according to expected sales volumes
• Integrate markups and markdowns
• Control end-of-season stock quotas

For the ﬁrst time, this tool enabled purchasing to determine the feasibility of the pricing structure, compare it with independent market research data and thus verify the collection. At the same time, both merchandise management and purchasing recognized how the planning framework interconnects their respective functions and how their deﬁ ned KPIs depend on each other.

The most valuable outcome was the tool’s acceptance on all levels (planning, purchasing, sales) and its permanent integration into planning.

Calendar Management

Calendar management – a date for every process

An international retail chain with over 700 stores had grown continuously in past years. The company gained good proﬁ ts. At the same time, its existing purchasing and merchandizing processes, which were divided into centralized and decentralized areas of responsibility, revealed too many interfaces and involved parties to be ﬂ exible – a key requirement in achieving the retailer’s plans to introduce new collections at an accelerated pace.

Team Retail Excellence supported the management in designing optimized and centralized processes. In several phases of interviews, observation of existing processes, creativity workshops and capacity planning, target processes were developed. Notably, a 45% reduction of interfaces led to a signiﬁ cant improvement in process complexity. The approach was an iterative development process, always in cooperation with the customer’s project team. But the biggest obstacle was the process of transforming theoretical target processes into operational day-to-day work.

The following approaches were used in the transformation process:

• Planning of activities in a 52-calendar-week timeline
• Identiﬁcation of core activities
• Establishment of a milestone calendar
• Continuous testing of the calendar
• Development of a 365-day calendar with ﬁxed times and participants, taking into account tradeshows, events, travel etc.

In this context, external and internal factors like new supplier structures, new pacing of collection launches and longer sourcing times led to several redesigns and adaptations of the target process calendar.
The theory deﬁned at the beginning was translated into a real-life planner – developed in purchasing. Its transfer into practical use led to immediate implementation of the target processes and broad acceptance within the company. In addition, all staff members were given a clear overview of the effects and interactions of the processes.

Merchandise Management

Allocation management – don’t invest, optimize

A successful, vertically structured fashion retailer suspected that its allocation management process was not fully realizing its stores’ sales and proﬁ t potential. For this reason, the company planned to change its allocation management to push/pull. Before ﬁnalizing the decision, the management wanted to have a further, intensive check of the plan carried out. It asked Team Retail Excellence for support in deciding whether or not to implement push/pull.

Together with a small but strong project team drawn from the customer’s staff, Team Retail Excellence examined the existing allocation management and discussed joint data analyses. Following two intensive workshops, the project team reached the conclusion that a push/pull system was not the optimum solution – quite the opposite, as it would signiﬁ cantly increase the complexity of the retailer’s merchandise management.

In addition, it was recognized that there were many different possibilities for optimizing the existing allocation management system, representing a potential sales boost of 2m and a 0.5m reduction in process costs. Stock transfer could be reduced by 40%.
Team Retail Excellence supported the customer’s project team in jointly deﬁ ning optimization measures and getting the merchandise management processes ﬁt for the future.
This took place in four steps:

The goal set, to enable the customer team to develop and implement process optimization measures independently, was achieved. The solutions developed were made part of day-to-day work and successively implemented according to predetermined priorities.